Media content may be received at a media device in a streaming fashion. The media device may receive the stream of media content from a content source via a particular communication medium. Such communication mediums include, but are not limited to, the Internet, a terrestrial broadcast over-the-air signal, a broadcast satellite signal, a wire-based signal (i.e., a signal communicated via a cable system or a telephony system).
Typically, the streaming media content comprises different media content events that are presented to the user in a serial fashion on a display coupled to, or that is part of, the receiving media device. Generally, the user of the media device is interested in viewing a particular media content event of interest, such as a movie, a serial program, a sporting event, a news program, or the like. Such media content events are typically theme-based, and are provided with the intent of entertaining the user who is viewing the presented media content event on the display.
Interspersed between segments of the media content event of interest may be other intervening content segments that are unrelated to the particular media content event of interest that the user has selected for viewing. Examples of such other intervening content segments include a commercial, an infomercial, an advertisement, or a promotion, defined hereinafter as an intervening content segment. Typically, the theme of an intervening content segment is not related to the theme of the media content event of interest that the user has selected for viewing. Rather, the themes of these intervening content segments are often intended to inform the user about a product and/or service that may be available to the user, and/or may be an attempt to educate the user about a particular topic of interest. Further, these intervening content segments are intended to influence and/or coerce the user into purchasing the product and/or service that is being advertised in the intervening content segment, and/or to influence an opinion of the user who is viewing the intervening content segment. (Accordingly, an intervening content segment is defined herein as a content segment that intervenes between portions of a media content event of interest, wherein the theme of the intervening content segment is different form a theme of the media content event of interest, and wherein the duration of the intervening content segment is relatively shorter than the duration of the adjacent portions media content event of interest.)
In some situations, such intervening content segments may be distracting to the user, thereby complicating the process of following the theme of the media content event of interest that the user has selected for viewing. Accordingly, the user may not be interested in viewing the intervening content segments that are interspersed between segments of the media content event of interest that the user has selected for viewing.
Many systems have been devised to attempt to block, replace, and/or skip over (fast forward over) presentation of these intervening content segments. A significant barrier to blocking, replacing or skipping over the presentation of intervening content segments is the need to identify an intervening content segment before, or just as, the intervening content segment begins to be presented on the display. Thus, the intervening content segment needs to be identified from the segments of the media content event of interest as that particular intervening content segment is being received in the media content stream.
Some legacy systems rely on an identifier or the like that is included in each intervening content segment. However, such legacy systems have been thwarted in the effort to block, replace, and/or skip over the intervening content segment (e.g., advertisement) because the organizations associated with the intervening content segment have paid a premium to the provider of the media content stream to have their intervening content segment (advertisement or the like) presented to the user.
Thus, there is a need in the art to provide an improved method and system that blocks, replaces, and/or skips over undesirable intervening content segments that are interspersed between segments of the media content event of interest that the user has selected for viewing.